


Mitosis

by gabriels_heresy



Category: The Glass Scientists (Webcomic)
Genre: Body Horror, Gore, mutation related body horror i guess?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-27
Updated: 2017-12-27
Packaged: 2019-02-22 09:05:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13163721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gabriels_heresy/pseuds/gabriels_heresy
Summary: *warning do not attempt mitosis unless a fully trained single celled organism.Doing so might result in grievous bodily harm and a lifetime of therapy*





	Mitosis

It began as an itch, about three quarters of an hour ago. Henry thought nothing of it to begin with, a nuisance adding to his already agitated mood. 

He had suffered an entire evening of niceties and polite conversation at a mind numbingly dull soiree; his only solace being the complimentary wine which he must have drank at least a bottle of. He was particularly impatient to let Hyde take his fill of the night… but no… there was some kind of fault in in the draft of potion he had with him. An error in the measurements perhaps? Or an impurity in one of the plethora of chemicals it contained? Whatever the matter, he was impatient to return to his lab and try again.

Edward wined persistently in his ear;

_ You did this on purpose. _

_ You know I didnt. _

_ Well hurry uuuup. _

_ Be quiet… _

Edward continued his lament, but Henry found it easier and easier to ignore him… as the itch became apparent… Edward could not feel the it but became aware of Henry’s discomfort as it grew to an ache then bloomed into a searing burn the ran the length of his spin. It seemed to emanate from his very bones. The pain then bled into Edward, but it was localised to the inside of his head, niggling away it him like a headache. An improbable feat for a man that was a hallucination. 

_ What is this? _

_ I don’t know? _

_ What did you do? _

_ I didn’t do anything?! _

 

Henry stumbled through the backdoor of the laboratory and fell against the wall, his legs grew numb as his spine burned in a sharp crescendo of pain. Using the wall for support he limped into the dimly lit chemical scented room. 

A tightness about his throat began to choke him. Gasping for breath, his tingling fingers fumbled to loosen the cravat and unbutton the collar that now seems to cut deep into his thin neck. It did little to help alleviate his seemingly swollen throat… but it did not feel swollen… it felt-it felt as if something was pushing on the back of his windpipe… on the back of his neck… He ran cold with a dreadful thought. 

Painfully, tentatively he reached behind his head and slipped a hand down the shirt collar. His fingers found a firm, tender and painful mass forming over his spine. His fingers retreated in horror.

_ W-what’s happening to me? _

_ What’s going on? _

_ What could this be?!  _

_ What’s happening to ME? _

Suddenly pain jolted up and down his spine, forcing Henry to arch his back into an unnatural angle. He couldn't even scream as the pain wired his teeth together. Only a muffled moan of agony escaped. But in his mind's eye he could see Edward as he screamed within, gripping at his head and bent double. The vision of Edward gew hazy as their shared pain intensified. 

 

To Henry it felt as it the mass upon his back was trying to pull away… but it was fused to the spinal column. Every moment it made tugged on the nerves that flowed through his spine. Sending his body into near convulsion. Edward’s screams subsided as he retreated to the very back of Henry’s mind, running from whatever attacked his psyche. To Edward the pain was a tearing, a splitting like lightning splits the atmosphere. The deeper he ran the more distant he felt from himself… from Henry… like every flash of this internal lighting drew their souls further and further apart…  

Eventual the tension in Henry’s spine subsided, allowing him to reach out and grab the workbench before him. His weakened arms gripped for support as his legs threatened to give way. Tears stung his dark eyes as he braced for the second wave of agony he somehow knew was to come.

He raised his eyes and saw the mirror, that mirror who had seen a thousand horrors before… he needed to see what has happening to his body...

With great difficulty, he raised himself up; legs bowed bearing the weight of the burning under his flesh, and attempted to remove his waistcoat and shirt. Shaking, twitching hands clumsily fiddled at the buttons till a sudden jolt of pain flung his still gripping hand away; waistcoat buttons tore away and gave his chest a little room to breath as the growth forced his own body against the cloth. Next his shirt, not even attempting to remove it the correct way, he tore free of it and gasped for breath. The shirt fell about his waist as he turned his back to the mirror.

He almost shrieked at the gruesome sight of his own back.

 

What-what looked to be a second spinal column… had duplicated from his own?! Henry couldn't even bring himself to scream; he merely continued to stare at the undulating mass of new bone that pulled against the inside of his flesh.

_ What’s happening t-to me? _

_ Edward? Edward can you see this?! Is this real?! _

Edward gave no reply… 

Over the new bone the skin had a translucency, not caused by a stretching of the skin but… but the formation of fresh skin, lacking in melanin. Like the fish that spend millenia evolving in utter darkness. 

Henry twisted his face back away from the mirror. A ghastly conclusion hit him.

_ N-no… _

_ B-b-but how? _

This second spine was shorter than his own… and with Edwards silence… it had to be what was happening… Edward was… Edward was growing out of him… 

The mass, as if prompted by this thought, jolted once more into a violent burst of growth.

His knees buckled as his muscles spasmed; he fell to the floor, armes braced under in rigid convulsion, sparing his face the impact. 

He could no longer see what was taking place upon his back.

 

The second spine arched away from the body, the translucent skin stretching and growing as it tugged slow and painful. With every pull from the body the skin stretched outwards as a ribcage formed. At the tail of the spin the bones of the hips began to push out from Henry’s, but they could not move. The waist of his breeches prevented the bone moving outwards. Instead they were forced into his own pelvic bone. The grinding pain filled him with a nausea as his body tried to comprehend what was happening inside. Arms, stiff and shaking. He moved them out from under his chest and attempted to pull down his britches. The mass, almost like it knew what he was doing, paused in its rapid expansion, returning to its quivering, nulled state. His fingers, still twitching from the constantly firing nerves, fumbled at the button till it came loose but… he could not remove them. His legs were utterly numb from the force of the half formed pelvis as it pressed into his own and lower back. His arms could just reach enough to pull them clear of the worst of the mass. 

Henry laid still, breathing heavy, cheek against the cold wooden floor and mind foggy… His mind… it felt empty… devoid of thought bar the indication of pain… But then something else wormed its way into the realm of sensation… He could hear a tearing. A rapid and persistent  succession of sharp ripping. A sound akin to a bag of rice being poured onto a stone floor while the brain is stabbed with ten thousand needles. Was this what Edward could feel? 

 

In the furthest corner of Henry’s mind, Edward cowared. The pain so intense he could no longer feel it… only hear it… a shrill ring from within. Was this ring the thunder to the lightning that was tearing the two minds appart? The dark grey clouds smothered the thin barrier between the two shared souls… but their link was not yet gone...

 

The hips pulled suddenly outwards. Henry screamed aloud as his muscle and flesh tore apart under the skin to allow the new bone to pass through. It stretched his skin outwards, pulling tight over the curved bone like a drum, then the translucent skin too formed over it, still thin yet easing the tensions somewhat. Not that henry could notice, the pain had reached a point beyond comprehension. 

 

The cells in his body were in a state of simultaneous destruction and regeneration on an exponentially rapid scale. Mitosis of a complex being. The separation of one life into two. 

He blacked out for a moment, eyes rolled back and facial muscles contorting. 

Shoulder blades emerged, slicing under then through the muscle. 

Femurs and tibias stripped into existence, popping into the fresh sockets with a sickening grind. Pushing the britches down with every tugg away from the main body.

Within the rib cage organs gestated; first the heart, which sprouted arteries, capillaries and veins, like ivy, that spread under the skin, light pink flesh followed these tentrals of new blood, forming softly over the bones already formed. Next the lungs, useless sacks of meat and fluid waiting for the eventual formation of a throat and mouth to take in their first taste of oxygen. Henry came too out of his brief moment of escape to a black void, just in time for his body to force the contents of his stomach, most of a bottle of wine, out onto the floor. His body too exhausted and paralysed with pain to even move from the acidic, slightly rancid, red puddle that pooled about his face. His body somehow knew that they stomach was to follow suit, then a liver, kidneys, an intestinal tract… all came into existence as the upper body continued to pull away. 

Arm bones too began their separation and birth, giving the body yet more strength to divide itself from Henry. A central nervous system slithered through the new flesh from the spine, but with no brain to connect too it was unable to yet feel the pain of life. 

The skin that formed over the mass did not cling to the bones like that of a living human, but stretched over thin like a blanket that merged with the pale, pink flesh of Henry. 

 

A head still not formed but a thin body jutted out from him, like the parasitic twins he had read about in medical journals… if the twins shared a skin. A body devoid of conscious life and atominity, feeding off its sibling who had attempted to cannibalise it in utero, but, for reason unknown, had not completed the absorption. This parasite was akin to those poor children… yet… this body was most certainly alive, alive and thinking. Craving life. Reaching for it in the pitch dark with hands that did not even exist yet… Yet.

 

Henry slipped back into unconsciousness as delicate finger bones cracked away from his wrists; pushing the artery and tendon into an unnatural position. 

Now the mass had hands of its own it found better grip to push itself free. The pale bones slithered about under the thin, stretched out skin as it grabbed for purchase on Henry’s bone and muscle, exposed by the translucent skin.

Still headless, the mass pushed itself upwards, pulling the skin with it like a hand under a silk blanket. Then, the top of the spine began too to move. A skull formed. Slow and steady. Particle by particle. The second skull stretched the skin upon the back of Henry’s head out until his thick hair was splayed thin like a half plucked chicken. The skull continued to pull away, the flesh looked to tearing point but,

But where a tear would form that thin new skin grew.

 

With the skull formed the complex muscles and glands that fill the neck formed… And so too the brain. 

 

Edward could not see anything. Only feeling a sensation of agony that could not be exceeded at the hour of birth or death. Never endings began to fire and he was overwhelmed with a sensation of-of-of… of a wetness… like hands slick with blood. 

Panic racked him. All he could think was that he was blind and covered in blood. What had happened after he blacked out? But then he noticed something else… he could not breath… he could not speak… his lungs were filled with fluid? Was this wetness from drowning? Oh god was he drowning?! Edward thrashed realising he felt constrained… like he was trapped in something… like he was trapped in a sack and thrown into water? What had he gotten himself into? 

 

Henry slipped in and out of awareness… he could no longer feel what was taking place within his body. His nerve endings were burnt out from overstimulation… all he could do was pray silently for the release of death. 

 

The opaque film of skin stretched and moved as Edward tried to escape, through the thin skin the stripped back body was staining red and blue with blood vessels that were slowly coated with sinewy muscle . He squirmed and quivered a top the twitching, hardly conscious body of its… of his sibling. His sibling whose own muscular system was laid bare by the clear skin. Like an anatomical map drawn by the hand of a madman…

 

With his skeleton completed, flesh, blood and organs close behind, its skin enclosed around him. Wrapping the body tight. Colour slowly seeped into him. When the new met the old it ripped with the sound of hot flesh peeled from leather and an in invisible seam sealed the two bodies. 

Edward collapsed into a fetal position at Henry’s side; exhausted from his desperate attempt to escape from what he thought to be an attempted murder ‘a la unwanted kitten’. His face was blank; smooth and devoid of features. But there was movement below. Through the thin skin of the jaw; two rows of teeth pressed tight against it, imprinting its pattern. Gradually… the shape of lips formed. Pale too like the rest of the skin but filled out and defined. Eyeballs twitched rapidly behind the layer of skin that soon split apart into lids. Nostrils opened and Edward took in his first breath of air. A quiet rush of cool, evening air, tainted with the slight honeyed sulfur scent from the laboratory floor. Starved of oxygen he opened his mouth and took in a gasp of breath. The he gasped again and again and coughed up the fluid that filled his lungs. 

He blinked his eyes open, that first breath of air upon the eyes pierced like needles and the light burned them further still. He screwed them shut to stave off the irritation. Where ever he was it was on dry land… and he needed to catch his breath and find his strength before he could try and get away… at least that’s why his fearful and disorientated mind told him. He slipped into light rest.

 

Henry too blinked his eyes open as Edward did his. Pain still present but he realised it was nowhere near as intense. He raised a weak arm and touched his lower back, the skin was raw and tender to the touch but there was no wound… He wondered for a moment, perhaps it was all a hallucination? A bad reaction to the faulty potion? No… it happened. It had to. His mind was silent, empty and devoid of Edwards consciousness… A lonely bliss... And he could hear over his own shallow breath… anothers. 

He forced his stiff neck to turn his head over to the other side.

 

Edward gradually looked more and more human, his skin close to its regular shade; if not smoother and softer. Blonde hair had grow in a thin layer over his head, light eyebrows too and eyelashes on the still closed lids. He almost resembled a newborn… but I suppose… he almost was.

 

Henry stared at him through hazy, stinging eyes. He didn’t know what to feel at the sight of his no longer other self. 

Disgust for the unnatural process they were dragged through so painfully? 

Curiosity for the being whom he once was, then divided from, personified? 

Pity for the sorry state of themselves? He moved an arm across the rough wood floor and placed a hand on Edwards shoulder. He felt very hot and smooth to the touch; a watery veil of slime coated him that stuck to Henry's hand. Edward did not react for a few moments to his touch but then,

Edward rolled his shoulder at the realisation of touch and stirred a little from his confused state of rest. Henry allowed his weak hand to fall down to the floor once more and left it there, too exhausted from the birth to move anymore. 

 

Edward regained consciousness and fear spread through him like a wildfire. He jolted upright. Heart beating rapidly. He was confused. Scared. Looking about his surroundings he was startled to find himself in the laboratory… he could have sworn he was drowning in the Themes  just moments ago…  and… and … and why was he naked?! 

Edward looked at his body and even move panicked confusion hit him. 

**_Why am I all smooth and slimy?!_ **

He ran his hands over his arms, in gobsmacked horror, and up to his head where he gripped at the thin, slick fuzz of hair that had replaced his messy locks. His face contorted into an even more despairing grimace of bemusement.

**_Where's all my hair?!!?!!?_ **

Then his gaze fell to who lay at his side. Henry. Too weak to move, or even open his eyes; but still conscious. A thin, tired smile was upon his face from listening to Edwards self discovery. 

Edward looked down at him with a look of shock and wonder. And concern. 

 

He tried to stand but could only manage to his knees. He reached out a hand to touch his other self; slowly, gently, scared he would phaze through him like an illusion… or hallucination… But who was real? 

His hand met his arm, it was cold and slick from sweat. Henry groaned quietly at the touch and Edward recoil his fingers. The realisation of the situation finally hit him. They were both real. Both tangible. Both with independent body's and minds simultaneously together at once in reality… Edward grinned wide with excitement… he was free… finally… they both were.  

 

Edward shook Henry on the arm,

‘Hey, hey are you awake?’, his voice was raised and slightly softer than usual; fresh vocal cords undamaged by the city smog, alcohol and excessive intake of an acidic alchemical potion, ‘You look an absolute mess.’,

‘I feel a mess too…’, Henry croaked, his eyes half open, ‘Are you going to help me up?’ 

Edwards smile turned into a slight frown, ‘I-I’m not sure if i can stand…’. 

Edward shifted himself away somewhat from Henry and reached up and behind for the workbench top. His fingers were still slippy from the slime, and only made worse by the soft skin, but managed to pull himself to standing. His legs wobbled as they experienced weight for the first time and threatened to give way. But he held steadfast. Looking like a baby horse he stumbled back over to Henry and tried to lift him up from under his arms. Both in a state of weakness it was difficult but, after nearly being dropped several times, Henry came to support himself on Edward. They stumbled over to the staircase that led to their cabinet and sat heavily upon the step. Henry propped his head against the railing and Edward against the wall. And they sat in silence. Slick shoulders rubbing together. 

Then Edward began to laugh. 

‘You know as well as I do this was almost what I had in mind for what the potion was supposed to do all those years ago…’, he said as he tried to suppress his amusement.

‘Yes but it was meant to be considerably less painful… for myself at least.’, Henry sighed, ‘What shall we do now?’

Edward ran a hand over his smooth head and said with great consideration, ‘I fancy a bath.’ 


End file.
